Big government conservatism alienates libertarians
By W. James Antle III
web posted June 23, 2003
The growing tension between conservatives and libertarians,
noted in "The Conservative-Libertarian Clash: Values and the
Free Society," continues to threaten the fusionist consensus that
has characterized the postwar political right. Libertarians are
increasingly giving up on mainstream conservatives and looking
elsewhere for allies in the fight for liberty.
Case in point is Reason science correspondent Ronald Bailey,
who has written an article
announcing his membership in the American Civil Liberties
Union. FOXNews.com columnist Radley Balko, a libertarian
who normally votes Republican, responded by saying he may
follow and noting his own recent "slide leftward" in an entry on
his blog: "I'm about 90 percent certain now that I won't be voting
for President Bush in 2004."
One of the talking points the elder George Bush used to
demonstrate that his 1988 opponent Michael Dukakis was to the
left of the American mainstream involved castigating him as "a
card-carrying member of the ACLU." The journalist Jeremy Lott
once described the ACLU's agenda as neither civil nor
libertarian but
libertine socialism. Now some libertarians see the ACLU as
a better friend to the Bill of Rights than the right. As Tim
Cavanaugh posted over at Reason's Hit and Run blog, they're
not just for Dukakis anymore.
Several years ago, conservatives began to notice that
Republicans were losing close elections in part due to votes cast
for Libertarian Party candidates. This occasioned complaints that
by inadvertently helping Democrats get elected, libertarians were
objectively voting against the enactment of their own small-
government agenda. In a New York Times op-ed piece after the
2002 elections -- in which Libertarian candidates arguably cost
Republicans up to four Senate seats -- National Review's John
J. Miller wrote, "Yet Libertarians are now serving, in effect, as
Democratic Party operatives. The next time they wonder why
the Bush tax cuts aren't permanent, why Social Security isn't
personalized and why there aren't more school-choice pilot
programs for low-income kids, all they have to do is look in the
mirror."
But the sad fact is that Republicans have in recent years been
awful on size-of-government issues. Worse, the conservative
movement seems to have lost interest in the subject. The major
conservative periodicals no longer devote as much space to the
need to shrink government as they once did. Conservative policy
wonks don't seriously urge Republicans to scale back the scope
of federal authority. David Frum, in his excellent book Dead
Right, detailed how leading conservative intellectuals and
politicians have been AWOL in the pursuit of smaller
government and explained that the welfare state is a major cause
of the right's main economic and cultural concerns. Since
returning to conservative journalism after leaving the Bush
administration, he has mostly focused on other topics.
George W. Bush, while in many respects more conservative than
his father, was never partial to the kind of anti-statist rhetoric
used by Ronald Reagan. The substance of his policies has not
been much different. He deserves credit for pushing tax cuts
through a recalcitrant Congress, lowering marginal income tax
rates twice, but he has done little to restrain federal spending
even after accounting for increases in defense and legitimately
homeland security-related outlays. As the Cato Institute's
Veronique de Rugy has written, the current data shows federal
spending rising 13.5 percent in the first three years of the Bush
administration, with non-defense discretionary spending going up
18 percent. These are bigger spending boosts than during Bill
Clinton's first three years in office.
Rather than eliminate any major federal agency, we have added
a new Cabinet-level department. The education bill formulated
with Ted Kennedy's help increases rather than decreases the
federal role in education. Foreign aid spending is up. Bush
approved new tariffs on steel and softwood lumber, and signed a
bloated farm bill that recklessly increases the subsidies paid by
taxpayers and has negative trade consequences. He also signed
the McCain-Feingold restrictions on political speech into law.
The addition of a new prescription drug benefit to the already
struggling Medicare program may be the next policy move to
enlarge the distance between libertarians and Bush Republicans
into a yawning chasm.
Yet the greatest reason for libertarian disenchantment with the
Bush administration -- and their preference for alliances with
groups like the ACLU rather than conservative organizations -
may turn out to revolve around civil liberties. As Balko put it on
his blog, "I'm as convinced as ever now that the greatest threat to
our liberty is not the welfare state, the tax code, or Social
Security -- though those are all valid concerns. The greatest
threat, I think, is directed at our civil liberties, and comes under
the guise of national security." U.S. Attorney General John
Ashcroft has become as unpopular with libertarians as his
controversial Democratic predecessor. Yet had Clinton and
Janet Reno proposed the USA PATRIOT Act, congressional
Republicans would have resisted. Introduced by Bush and
Ashcroft in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist
attacks, Republican members of Congress overwhelmingly
supported it.
The PATRIOT Act moved to increase federal surveillance
powers in the aftermath of the attacks, but it was hastily
conceived and enacted. It was not the product of a public review
how best to enhance security against future attacks. Many
libertarians argued that the best approach would be for the
federal government to make better use of the powers it has
rather than assume new ones. "The success of the 9/11
hijackers," James Bovard wrote in The American Conservative,
"was due far more to a lack of government competence than to a
shortfall in government power." There is even greater concern
about the details that have emerged about a possible Domestic
Security Enhancement Act, frequently called PATRIOT II, on
Bill of Rights grounds.
Combined with the Defense Department's Total Information
Awareness program, this legislation has concerned civil
libertarians. The ACLU drafted a letter to Congress, signed by
67 organizations across the political spectrum, suggesting that
PATRIOT II entails "new and sweeping law enforcement and
intelligence gathering powers, many of which are not related to
terrorism, that would severely dilute, if not undermine, basic
constitutional rights."
While congressmen like libertarian Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) have
futilely opposed government growth, most of the Republican-
controlled Congress has gone along with it. Republicans who
desire to demonstrate their strength on the war on terror and law
and order seek to federalize criminal laws that would properly be
state prerogatives under the Constitution. On fiscal policy, even
many tax-cutting economics conservatives have little interest in
cutting spending. The Independent Institute's Alexander
Tabarrok suggests that in reality we have a choice between the
"Tax and Spenders and No-Tax and Spenders," or really
borrow and spenders. Some of the most visible Republican
spokesmen for limited government and free-market economics
-- such as Dick Armey, Phil Gramm and even Bob Barr - are
no longer in Congress. Republican governors all over the country
are raising taxes or increasing spending.
But this big-government conservatism doesn't just rile organized
libertarians. It irritates grassroots rank-and-file conservatives as
well. This has helped groups that are interested in small-
government core principles, ranging from the supply-side and
anti-tax outfits like the Club for Growth and Grover Norquist's
various outfits to the more overtly libertarian Republican Liberty
Caucus grow, backing like-minded candidates against
establishment Republicans.
This is not only true with respect to economic issues, but also
civil liberties issues less commonly identified as conservative
concerns. The Knight Ridder/Tribune news service has reported
that Republicans, not just small-l libertarians, have been joining
the ACLU in droves since 9/11. The group has signed
Republicans like Armey and Barr on as consultants, while groups
like the American Conservative Union, Gun Owners of America
and Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum have joined it in expressing
concern about PATRIOT II and other legislation. Despite
establishment Republican flaws, the rank-and-file right may still
prove to be the best friends libertarians have.
This is not to minimize the fact that there have always been areas
of disagreement between traditionalists and libertarians on the
right. Many of these types of issues -- notably, gay marriage,
abortion and cloning - will dominate public debate in the coming
months, possibly exacerbating the tendency among libertarians to
break with the right and seek alliances with the left. Already
some signs of this are evident. During the 2002 elections,
Virginia Postrel was rooting for a Democratic Senate on the
grounds that pro-life Republicans would work for tougher
restrictions on cloning. Libertarian bloggers like Julian Sanchez
have been particularly tough on conservatives Stanley Kurtz and
John Derbyshire's arguments against gay marriage. But
conservative Republican politicians are, with few exceptions, as
reluctant to debate social issues as they are to confront the
federal Leviathan. It says a lot about the sorry state of fusionism
today that conservative politicians try to hold the right together
by paying lip service to both libertarians and traditionalists,
hoping to offend neither.
Nevertheless, the problem may yet turn out to be less the result
of longstanding divisions than the abandonment of smaller
government as a major conservative objective. If conservatives
do not reclaim their legacy of limited government, the right will
continue to lose libertarian support -- and will not deserve it.
W. James Antle III is a senior editor for Enter Stage Right.
Enter Stage Right -- http://www.enterstageright.com